New Year's Resolutions. Also, book quotation.

This week's quote comes from what *should* be the official guide to womanhood, Bridget Jones' Diary. It also leads me right into my resolutions for the new year, since I'm picking a quote from BJ's resolutions. I have a feeling this book will lead to many weekly quotes.

I WILL NOT
Waste money on: pasta makers, ice-cream machines or other culinary devices which will never use; books by unreadable literary authors to put impressively on shelves; exotic underwear, since pointless as have no boyfriend.

Sulk about having no boyfriend, but develop inner poise and authority and sense of self as woman of substance, complete without boyfriend, as best way to obtain boyfriend.

There were quite a few more that were actually applicable to my life, but these ones made me laugh and so they were the ones quoted. For those of you (females, that is) who haven't read this book, DO IT. So. Freakin. Hilarious. Best $14 I ever spent on a book (which I then perused, crossing out all the swearwords and writing nicer words in pen so I could lend it to my more virtuous friend. Yes, I defaced and CENSORED a book!). But I'll write more about my BFF Bridget later.

Today is also about resolutions. I've made many over the years, most of them unkept. Oh like you're any better, don't even give me that! This year I'm hoping that making them public (to the three people that actually read this) will make me more accountable. Here goes!!

1. I will get more healthy. It's not enough to eat sporadically and say that that means I'm eating less. I actually need to exercise and eat like a normal person! That will be miraculous since it will be undoing about 15 years of habit, but I know it's possible!
2. I will start reading my scriptures every day again. Right now, I have no clue where they are. But I will find them and get back to the good stuff.
3. I will be nicer. Bridget wrote about how she would stop bitching about people behind their backs and be positive instead. I'm going to try that too. I'm sure daily scripture reading will help!
   
4. I will stop killing plants. It's time to accept that my thumb is not anything like green and stop buying those stupid mini-rose bushes no matter how much I love them (and I really really love them!), because all that happens is they die long, slow, tragic deaths and I'm sad until the next bunch goes on sale at Smith's. End the circle of death!
5. I will be nicer to my family, whom I love. Is that how you use whom?* It's somehow easier to be mean to the people you love because you feel like they can't just leave you, but I will show them how much I love them through kindness and not impatience. (Check most of them out in this awesome Christmas video!)
   
6. * I will learn the proper usage of words like "whom" and "resounding" so that when I use them in my blog, I'm not paranoid and nervous that I'm a grammatically challenged fool, but rather am full of confidence in my Webster's-like prowess (I will also learn the proper usage of "prowess" just in case).
   

I think those are maybe good for now. A few good, solid, achievable goals for the new year. Look out, 2009: HERE'S SUSIE!!!

Yo yo yo, and a ho ho ho: Merry Christmas dawgzz!

So last night after a long long day at the job site (Walmart - what better way to destroy the spirit of Christmas than to be forced to serve impatient, obnoxious, and angry procrastinators on Christmas Eve) I met up with my sisters and we headed to the ol' homestead. Or rather we would have if I hadn't seriously underestimated the amount of luggage two world travelers would need for a mere week's visit home. These girls have gone everywhere and all over, I had assumed that they would have two *maybe* three suitcases tops because surely they'd be expert packers by now. More fool I! But thanks to my sister Anna's mad tetris-like skills, we rearranged and repacked the car and started out just a bit later than planned.

I decided I was too tired to drive (again, Walmart - thanks for killing my spirit and draining my life forces from me on a daily basis), so I let Anna take the wheel. I'd say the combined driving skills in the family are pretty average, but there are a few members who tend to weave slightly (and by "slightly" I mean they weave like a snake crossing the hot desert sands) and who also hallucinate strange things when driving at night. Anna may or may not be one of those people, I'll never tell. But I will say that the two passangers did say a little prayer about halfway through when the driver got a bit sleepy at the same time the weather took a turn for the worse (it felt like any minute we would be whisked up into the air and off to Oz where we would run over Dorothy and the gang with my crap car).

Finally we made it home and after a delightful Christmas Eve and a morning filled with presents, laughter, and dropping the dog in the snow drifts outside and laughing hysterically while she tried to climb back out again, all I can say is Merry Christmas to all!! Loves :)

Book quotation

This week is again Terry Pratchett. What can I say, the man's just really funny to me. I like his books! This one is entitled Men at Arms.

No clowns were funny. That was the whole purpose of a clown. People laughed at clowns, but only out of nervousness. The point of clowns was that, after watching them, anything else that happened seemed enjoyable. It was nice to know there was someone worse off than you. Someone had to be the butt of the world.

So I have mixed feelings about this particular passage. On the one hand, looking over my life I can still point to my trip to the circus when I was about 24 as one of the most exciting times ever - yeah, you heard me; I was 24 (not 4) and I could barely sit still from excitement. I loved the clowns.

On the other hand, how many creepy killer clown movies are there? Could it be that I am in a rare minority that enjoys clowns while the rest of the world agrees with Mr. Pratchett that clowns are something to edge nervously away from, all the while showing neither your back nor your fear? As my little sister pointed out, no one has lips that big. What's that all about? Also, who can think of clowns without thinking of this (evidence both to the wrongness of clowns *and* Tim Curry).

At any rate, I think the statement (and the sentiment behind it) is really funny (even if I've creeped myself out looking for stuff about clowns).

Mad genius

This is a tribute to the brilliant creative mind that is my brother, David. Since before time remembered, my brother has made me laugh to the point that I never even had a chance of being witty back. My only contributions to some of our conversations were Goofy-like laughs and snorts.

I'm glad that he let me hang out with him all last year and take part in his movie schemes, whether it be zombie adventures, zooby adventures, or just sitting in the background giggling like in this video (a must see!).

So thank you David, for bringing the world a bit of sunshine and laughter. Thanks for the chuckles and for putting up with my hyperness. You are Teh Greatest.

For those who are about to die, we salute you!

This is a tribute to all my showzz that are getting the boot this year. It may seem like a silly post, but I'm a TV junky and I love these shows like they were family. The main problem is that either I have horrible taste or the media does. I'm pretty sure it's the media.

Pushing Daisies - Why, gods of television, WHY?? I blame everything for the demise of this beautiful show (both literally beautiful and hyperbolically beautiful): ABC for turning out to be as moronic as Fox*, the public for not watching this show more and keeping ratings up, Neilsen for being a crappy ratings system anyway, and the weather because that's SOP when blame is involved. I mean, could *you* cancel this?And what, you ask, is replacing it? Lost reruns! Hooray. My mortal enemy, Lost, who has strung me along like that guy that you should dump but you just can't because maybe someday it will actually go somewhere. Whatever, I hate everything.

Eli Stone (probably, it seems) - Finally a show that is intelligent and humorous and stars Johnny Lee Miller *AND* it has singing and dancing. Of course it gets canceled. Once again, I blame ABC for sucking and not realizing a good thing when it's got one. The replacement - Primetime: What Would You Do? I'll tell you what I'd do, I'd kill Diane Sawyer and her stupid show for booting Johnny Lee Miller out of my weekly life. I LOVE YOU JLM!

Lipstick Jungle - Okay, so I don't really care so much about this show, it's just another thorn to prick at me and make me mad. The thing is, I liked Cashmere Mafia so much better, but the public picked this show as the winner in the contest of shows about beautiful power women, and now it's getting canceled too! Stupid public.

There were quite a few other fledgling shows that didn't make it from the nest, but I won't bother listing them. I'd rather also pay tribute to my other TV peeps that were killed by the writers' strike last year: Moonlight (sexy vampire detective? How could it fail??), Journeyman (time travel, hot Scottish guy from Made of Honor... again, how?), Miss Guided (just so cute), and Bionic Woman (she was supposed to be unstoppable!).

I lay a single rose at your headstones.


*Fox, the notorious stupid-heads who canceled Firefly, Arrested Development, and Futurama which then had to be made into movies to appease angry fans. Can they ever be forgiven for this? I think not.

Incidentally

I think I could watch those mome raths outgrabe all day. Here, watch them some more they're SO CUTE.

Quotation

This week's book passage is from The Jabberwocky:

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Now technically The Jabberwocky is a poem within a book, so the book would be Through the Looking Glass, but that whole book is like some kind of awful awful acid trip of madness. Also I didn't actually read it this week.

But how can you not love that part of the poem? I want to gyre and gimble! I don't know what the hell a mome rath is (other than those adorable little pom-pom things from the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland) but I'm so glad for them that they outgrabe. Now, read this poem ten times fast while spinning around in a circle (aka "outgrabing") and see if your day isn't just a little bit more insane!

UPDATE: I'm very sad to report that apparently Lewis Carroll did invent some definitions for his made-up words, but they aren't very good. I like my imagined definitions better. If, however, you wish to learn what a "mome rath" really is, here's where to find out.

Reading is fun!

Oops, I forgot last week. But don't think I wasn't readin' or nuthin. I just forgot.

Anyway, this is another Terry Pratchett book (that guy's srsly awesome, dudz) entitled Jingo.

Colon had always thought that heroes had some special kind of clockwork that made them go out and die famously for god, country and apple pie, or whatever particular delicacy their mother made. It had never occurred to him that they might do it because they'd get yelled at if they didn't.

And isn't that really what motivates us all; the fear of getting yelled at? I submit that it is. And if you disagree, I might yell at you.